


Something Borrowed

by CountlessUntruths (KaliCephirot)



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Domestic, Happy Ending, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 08:16:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20467895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaliCephirot/pseuds/CountlessUntruths
Summary: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue: four different times in the life of the TMFU team.





	Something Borrowed

**NEW**  
They have fun, creating their new identities for retirement. 

(Well. Solo and Gaby have fun: Illya says they're not taking it seriously, to which Solo replies that as a Duke he would always take matters seriously, especially when dealing with a long lost Austrian Princess that Gaby has claimed to be).

In the end it's nothing too glamorous. Gaby uses her mother's last name and keeps her job as a mechanic, but changes her nationality to Belgian as a way to explain her accent because few people in America would differentiate between a Belgian accent and a German one, and Germans are still distrusted, almost as much as Russians are. Solo is able to keep both his name and last name since they are, after all, already a pseudonym, but he disposes of most of his 'savings' to procure a charming house just outside of Boston where the three of them can live comfortably, and he takes a living as an art dealer and curator. Illya keeps his patronymic and becomes a distinguished Physics professor at the local College.

They keep mostly to themselves and hide their relationship in plain sight and let the neighbors make what they will. 

Two of them are Europeans, after all, and everyone knows that Europeans are Weird.

**OLD**  
Anniversaries are an odd thing to celebrate when you aren't, really, married. But every year, more or less around the date of their very first mission comes around, sometimes Napoleon, sometimes Illya, sometimes her, will plan a whole evening for the three of them, when they'll call for a babysitter and go into town. Sometimes they'll even let Napoleon steal something shiny, just for old time's sake

On such an evening, while finishing with her hair, letting Mischa decide on the accessories she will use (their daughter takes far too much from both Illya and Napoleon like that), Mischa asks a weird question in soft Russian.

"Mama, where you ever engaged?" 

(German is for anger and sports, French is for mischief, and Russian, in 1983 America, with the stupid Cold War, is for secrets).

"Why would you ask that?" she says, looking at her oldest daughter through the mirror, and then making a soft 'oh' when Mischa picks up her old, no longer functioning, engagement ring. She stopped wearing it around her neck when she was pregnant with Mischa, after it fell down and a corner chipped. 

Gaby smiles with all the memories that come back, pinning a curl - with already some gray in it carefully before going to sit by her daughter's side.

"Funny you should ask..."

**BORROWED**  
There's a practicality to Gaby that Illya can't help but embrace, two socialists living in the capitalist state of the occidental world. While Napoleon is more than happy to go and buy things for their house ("home", Illya corrects, but it still feels new and tender and something that he has to protect), Illya likes being able to do things for it himself, let it be painting it, fixing the roof, a broken window.

And Gaby, thankfully, is a happy middle between that. She takes on old dress shirts and old sweaters and a quite new Singer sewing machine and adds cushions or handkerchiefs and even, sometimes, new clothes out of discarded things.

"You know we can just buy it, right, Gaby?" Napoleon says, half teasing, half wincing as Gaby cheerfully tears an old-but-favorite Armani pinstripe shirt that got ruined by ink from a fountain pen.

"You didn't complain when I made myself that dress," Gaby says, batting her eyelashes towards him. Illya chuckles softly while Napoleon concedes the fight, leaning down to kiss her smile.

**BLUE**  
Napoleon wakes up from the anesthesia to the sounds of a fight that, for a moment, sounds like gibberish to him.

In something that comes from their years working together (and being together) they have made an amalgam of all the languages they speak: French, Italian, German, Russian, Japanese. Sometimes a word jumps from another language to them and one of them will answer with other languages, other phrases, until they have made a language of their own: it mostly comes out in these desperate situations. Desperanto, then, this language of theirs.

Illya's hands are shaking and he's pale, but instead of angry looks scared. Gaby looks furious, but her eyes are red and swollen. In almost five years since they've been together, he can count in one hand the times he has seen her cry.

And then he remembers. The bullet, Illya holding him while Gaby shot their suspect (they had needed him alive, Waverly couldn't have been happy about that), and he remembers Illya carrying him to the car while Gaby drove as if it was a race, and he trying to tell them where they could find his storehouses, about what to do with the things in them, trying to laugh and failing, about Illya telling him to stop saying goodbye, just stop, Cowboy, stop--

He feels the stretch of a new scar on his chest. He swallows, feels his mouth dry, but he has to-- he has to try.

"So, Peril, Teller," he says, and the fight stops. Both his lovers turn towards him. "Have you ever given a thought to retirement?"


End file.
